Weakened Earl hits Mass. with wind, rain, surf

BOB SALSBERG Associated Pres, Associated Press

By BOB SALSBERG Associated Press

Published 8:43 am, Saturday, September 4, 2010

A passer-by walks past a store-front window featuring a placard depicting Hurricane Earl, in Chatham, Mass., Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. Some shops in the town have boarded their windows in anticipation of the storm. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

A passer-by walks past a store-front window featuring a placard...

The Gallishaw family from Seekonk, Mass., braces for a large wave as it crashes over the Goosebury Island causeway in Westport, Mass., as Hurricane Earl approaches Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Standard Times , Peter Pereira)

The Gallishaw family from Seekonk, Mass., braces for a large wave...

A Coast Guard vessel is seen off the coast of Atlantic City, N.J., as Hurricane Earl moves up the eastern coast, Friday, Sept. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

This satellite image provided by NOAA shows Hurricane Earl taken at 3:15 a.m. EDT Friday Sept. 3, 2010. National Weather Service meterologist Jeremy Schulz said early Friday morning that rain bands stretched about 140 miles inland in North Carolina and up to the southern tip of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Sustained winds of about 30 mph were whipping the North Carolina coast. (AP Photo/NOAA)

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CHATHAM, Mass. -- The remnants of Hurricane Earl dumped wind-driven rain on Cape Cod's gray-shingled cottages and fishing villages Friday night, disrupting people's vacations on the unofficial final weekend of the short New England summer.

The storm swooped into New England waters as a tropical storm with winds of 70 mph after sideswiping North Carolina's Outer Banks, where it caused flooding but no injuries and little damage.

The storm passed wide of New York City, Long Island and the rest of the mid-Atlantic region, but brought swirling rain as it passed just off Cape Cod, Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard late Friday night.

Vacationers had pulled their boats from the water and canceled Labor Day weekend reservations on Nantucket, the well-to-do resort island and old-time whaling port. Shopkeepers boarded up their windows. Swimmers in New England were warned to stay out of the water -- or off the beach altogether -- because of the danger of getting swept away by high waves.

Airlines canceled dozens of flights into New England, and Amtrak suspended train service between New York and Boston.

No large-scale evacuations were ordered for Cape Cod, where fishermen and other hardy year-round residents have been dealing with gusty nor'easters for generations.

By midday Friday, Earl had dropped to a Category 1 storm -- down from a fearsome Category 4 with 145 mph winds a day earlier. At 11 p.m., Earl was downgraded to a tropical storm.

The storm was expected to pass about 50 to 75 miles southeast of Nantucket sometime after midnight.

The National Weather Service was forecasting winds up to 65 mph on Nantucket with gusts up to 85 mph. On Cape Cod, winds up to 45 mph with gusts of up to 60 mph were expected. At 10 p.m., Nantucket was seeing rain, rough surf and wind gusts above 35 mph.

"We've had some localized flooding on some roads -- nothing that a really bad rainstorm at this time of the summer don't already create," Nantucket Assistant Town Manager Gregg Tivnan said Friday night.

The last time the Cape was hit directly by a hurricane was 1991, when Bob brought 75 mph gusts that ripped through the region's grassy dunes, snapped trees and tore roofs off the weathered gray homes.

Earl was staying far off New Jersey and the eastern tip of New York's Long Island as it made its way north.

"Where is the hurricane everybody's been talking about?" asked Lenard LoBiondo as he stood with a drink and some relatives, telling truths on the deck outside the Liar's Saloon, a longtime locals hangout by a marina in Montauk, N.Y. As he spoke shortly after 9 p.m., a soft drizzle was falling and there was barely a breeze.

But the storm kicked up dangerous riptides up and down the coast. In New Jersey, two young men apparently died earlier this week in the rough surf caused by Earl and the hurricane before it, Danielle. Fog, wind and roiling seas also hindered the search for a boater who went missing before Earl's arrival early Friday afternoon in Portsmouth, N.H.

Rain from the outer bands of the storm forced a 25-minute delay at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York City. It also forced the postponement of a Red Sox-White Sox game in Boston.

On the Outer Banks, officials had urged tens of thousands of visitors and residents to leave the dangerously exposed islands as the storm closed in, but hundreds chose to wait it out in their boarded-up homes.

Earl's winds had dropped to 105 mph by the time the storm brushed past the ribbon of islands before dawn, and the storm center got no closer to shore than 85 miles. Hurricane-force winds, which start at 74 mph, apparently did not even reach the Outer Banks, said the National Hurricane Center's chief forecaster, James Franklin.

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said there was no serious damage and urged people to get back out for the Labor Day weekend to "have a little fun and spend some money."